“Whoa, Sam, what do you mean, ‘never again?'”

“I’m talking about concerts, Harry. Like No Doubt or Aerosmith. I’m telling you, I can’t take it anymore.”

“But you love concerts, Sam. As long as I’ve known you, you were never one to pass on a show like The Moody Blues, Box Car Racer or Hothouse Flowers. And now you’re saying ‘never again?’ What gives?”

“It’s those idiots that always end up sitting next to me, Harry. They drive me nuts.”

“I hear you on that one, Sam. Last week when I went to see The Strokes the guy next to me was on his cell phone during the entire show giving his friend a song-by-song description of the concert.”

“That’s nothing. I was at a Tool concert a couple of weeks ago, and the man and woman next to me were making out like a couple of high school kids. All that groping and grabbing. Heck, I don’t know if they ever saw the show.”

“Sounds like they were the show, Sam.”

“But that’s not as bad as when I saw Enrique Iglesias. The people next to me spent the first half of the show crawling over me to make beer runs. Then they spent the second half of the show crawling over me to go to the restrooms. Up and down the entire night. Sheesh.”

“I hate it when that happens, Sam. When I was at the Counting Crows concert, the guy sitting in front of me ate at least a dozen bean burritos during the first fifteen minutes of the show. Talk about your weapons of mass destruction. I almost passed out before the encore.”

“You know, Harry, either the concert audiences are getting out of hand or-“

“Or maybe we’re getting old, Sam?”

“I didn’t want to go there, but… Yeah, Harry, maybe we’re getting old.”

“Tell me, Sam, what was the last straw?”

“It had to be last night at the Bruce Springsteen show.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. The people next to me were like the audience members from hell. For starters, the woman was drenched in perfume and the man smelled like he bathed in Old Spice.”

“Yechh!”

“Plus, they were guzzling beer like it was going out of style. And during ‘Thunder Road,’ the woman pulled off her bra and tossed it up on stage, while the man was doing some strange dance where he jumped up and down like he was on a pogo stick.”

“Whoa! Sounds like some major concert interruptus, Sam.”

“But that’s only part of it, Harry. By the time the show was over, they had barfed all over themselves and were passed out on the floor in front of their chairs.”

“No way!”

“Way! And that’s why I say ‘never again.’ I just can’t handle people like that anymore, Harry.”

“Too bad, Sam. Dismemberment Plan and Badly Drawn Boy are coming to town and I know this guy who knows the promoter and…”

“Say no more, Harry. I’m there.”

“But what about all this crap about ‘never again?’ I thought you swore off going to concerts.”

“Oh, I didn’t say that I was giving up concerts, Harry.”

“You didn’t?”

“Oh, no. I’m just going to stop taking my parents to concerts.”